Paid downloaded apps are expected to reach $11 billion by 2014 notes a new Yankee Group report. Yankee Group attributes it to increased smartphone shipments, more app stores and more expensive apps--combining to nearly double forecasted mobile app revenue, from $537 million to $1.6 billion in 2010 alone. 

Here's what they found:

• Paid apps are on the rise. Nearly a third of all apps downloaded today are purchased, compared with just 18 percent a year ago.
• Average price per app is up. The overall average paid app costs $2.85, up from $1.99 a year ago.
• AT&T and iPhone users download the most. Apple iPhone users download 60 apps per year, three times the average, while AT&T users download 27 apps annually, or 42 percent more than average.
• T-Mobile and Android are a close second. T-Mobile, the closest thing to an Android pure play, comes in second for all carriers, with its users downloading more than 18 apps per year on average.
• Verizon has the most paid apps. Two-thirds of apps downloaded by Verizon users are paid, the most of any carrier.

Analytics firm, Flurry can detect and count unique devices in the market such as Google Nexus One and Motorola Droids.

Flurry estimated both sales of Nexus One Sales compared to Motorola Droid and the first generation iPhone, among others.

Revenues for mobile access to Web 2.0 applications and services will hit $18.9 billion in 2014, notes a new report from Juniper Research.

Presence-enabled communities, such as mobile voice-over-IP (VoIP), will be the primary market driver, followed by rapid growth in the social Web - which encompasses social networking, user-generated content (UGC) and mobile dating, chat & professional applications. Geolocation will also be an important enabler, and is forming part of an increasing number of Web 2.0 mobile mash-up service offerings.

While only a few respondents experienced mobile cyberbullying, 87 percent would like to have control over the messages they receive, opting for a preventative measure that can address cyberbullying threats immediately, rather than be caught off guard.

More than half questioned (62 percent) would like to be able to blacklist mobile numbers on their cell phone and would activate a blacklisting service for a reasonable price if it was available to them.

BlackBerry smartphone owners are thinking of switching to either iPhone or Android notes a new study from Crowd Science. Android users are almost as loyal as iPhone owners.

Nearly 40% of Blackberry users continue to prefer an iPhone as their next smartphone purchase, but a third of them would also switch to the Android operating system, according to the second smartphone brand loyalty survey conducted semi-annually via Crowd Science. The Crowd Scientists also found Android users rivaling iPhone users in loyalty, with about 90% of each user group planning to stick with their current brand when buying their next phone.

Asked specifically if they'd swap their present phone for the Nexus One, 32% of Blackberry users said "yes," compared with just 9% of iPhone users. This figure zoomed to 60% for users of smartphones not made by Blackberry or Apple.

iPhone apps are usually used in the evening and on the weekend notes an hourly study of iPhone app analytics data by Localytics. Mobile app usage in the US and Canada peaked at 9:00 pm EST during the week and maintained peak usage throughout weekend afternoons and nights.

By comparison, weekday app usage is more concentrated in the evening with a slow ramp during the working day and a peak at 9:00 pm EST, when East Coast users are at home and West Coast users are commuting home.

New Compete data is tracking how smartphones are integrated into the daily lives of all types of consumers which bodes well for mobile marketing, especially mobile coupons,

Consumers' primary usage of their smartphones is for reasons of personal productivity and entertainment. When asked how much time is spent on personal use , 74% of smartphone owners indicated they are using their device primarily for personal reasons.  Compete asked smartphone owners how much time is spent on their smartphone at various times of the day.

Smartphones are being used all times of the of the day.

TeleNav, released data that shows all kinds of interesting preferences for TeleNav users. Walmart is the most popular business location.  Los Angelenos use GPS the most for navigation for routing and re-routing around traffic. The favorite food for searching is pizza.  Phoenix is the most cost conscious city.

Walmart topped the list as the number one U.S. business TeleNav customers sought, while using their GPS service. Starbucks took a close second, Target and Best Buy, took the third and fourth spots respectively, while Bank of America rounded out the top five most searched destinations in the country.

Los Angeles took the number one position as the city where most GPS searches occurred in 2009. The Dallas/Ft. Worth area followed in a close second, indicating that while things may be bigger in Texas, it doesn’t always mean they’re easier to find. Chicago, Houston and Atlanta, respectively, rounded out the top five U.S. cities where most GPS searches took place.

The worldwide market for touchscreen mobile devices will surpass 362.7 million units in 2010, a 96.8 percent increase from 2009 sales of 184.3 million units, according to Gartner, Inc. By 2013, touchscreen mobile devices will account for 58 percent of all mobile device sales worldwide and more than 80 percent in developed markets such as North America and Western Europe.

"Touchscreens are no longer the preserve of high-end devices and are now being included in many midrange phones as more companies have been driving the consumer market for affordable touchscreen phones," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "As phone capabilities increase, consumers are becoming much more aware of the benefits of touch interfaces, and vendors are responding."

Desperately seeking new revenue opportunities amid intensifying competition from free alternatives, providers of navigation applications are turning to social networking sites to make their products more appealing to consumers, according to iSuppli Corp.

“Google’s and Nokia’s decision to provide free turn-by-turn navigation applications to users is posing a major competitive challenge to navigation application providers,” said Gerrit Schneemann, analyst for portable navigation and Location Based Services (LBS) at iSuppli. “These application providers require revenue from the sales of navigation applications to the smart-phone and PND markets. Because of this, these companies now are seeking to enhance the usability of their offerings and to extend them into as many other mobile sectors as possible. Navigation application providers and PND makers believe social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace provide a way accomplish both goals.”

According to a comScore study social networking access via mobile browsers is growing. The study found that 30.8 percent of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, up 8.3 points from 22.5 percent one year ago. Access to Facebook via mobile browser grew 112 percent in the past year, while Twitter experienced a 347-percent jump.

In January 2010, 11.1 percent of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via mobile browser, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from the previous year. Much of this growth has been driven by smartphone owners, 30.8 percent of whom accessed social networking sites on their mobile browsers, up more than 8 percentage points on the year. By comparison, just 6.8 percent of feature phone users accessed social networking sites on their mobile phones.

A ChaneWave survey says that iPad will give other readers a hit and that there is huge prelaund demand. The iPad is expected have a major impact on the e-Reader, laptop and home entertainment markets. The iPad however is expected to used not only as an e-Reader but for surfing the web.

• Over half of respondents (57%) are disappointed with the overall performance of their smartphone.  Streaming media, web browsers, and social networking applications are causing the most problems for smartphone users.  Nearly a third (29%) experience "continual" problems with newly acquired applications, and 64% of respondents have required some form of software patching to fix issues on their smartphone. 

• 55% of respondents cannot tell whether individual problems stem from the handset or the mobile network and, as a result, 53% instinctively blame the smartphone manufacturer whenever an issue arises.
• Smartphone owners are most likely to vocalize their dissatisfaction through social networking sites (58%) and to friends and family (57%).  At the same time, the purchasing decisions of 76% are influenced by criticisms from friends and family, and 64% will take heed of criticisms received via social media.

Many Winter Olympics fans accessed information form NBC Olympics Mobile platforms (Mobile Web Site and iTunes App), through the full 17 days of the Games amassed 87.1 million page views, 52 million more than the total number of page views for the entire 17-day Beijing Games (34.7 million).

• There have been two million mobile video streams in the17 days, more than six times the total number for the entire 17-day Beijing Games (301k).
• The NBC Olympics Mobile App was the No. 1 free sports app at the iTunes store throughout the first weekend of the Games and again on the final day of the Vancouver Olympics
• By the time the Opening Ceremony broadcast started at 7:30 p.m. on Feb 12, NBC Olympics Mobile already generated more page views than the entire 2006 Winter Games (1.0 million).

Millennial Media has released their January Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART). It offeres new insights into breakout campaign destination trends including m-Commerce, Social Media and Site Search and Campaign Effectiveness by Ad Vertical, supplied to us by InsightExpress. The U.S. Mobile Web: increased to 67M users, according to Nielsen (Dec.)

• Apple remained the number one device manufacturer with a 36.22% share of impressions in January - the largest percentage share since we starting publishing SMART in March 2009.
  
• Three new devices entered the Top Ten in January: the Motorola Clutch, Samsung Freeform and the Samsung Messager II. Two LG devices also entered the Top Fifteen: the LG VX5500 and the LG enV Touch. As three of the five new devices to enter the Top 20 had QWERTY keyboards, it is interesting to note, the QWERTY category, within the Device Input Mix, experienced the largest increase, or 16.59%, and represented 37.56% of impressions in January.
  
• A very close second within the Device Input Mix was the Touchscreen category with a 36.32% share of impressions. In the U.S. Smartphone OS Mix, Smartphones represented 58% of our network’s U.S. impressions in January - a 20% increase month over month.
  Over 77% of our network’s U.S. Smartphone impressions were among the iPhone and RIM OS’s.

Among the subgroup of internet-using mobile phone users, Pew found that the vast majority get some kind of news online:

• 72% check weather reports on their cell.

• 68% get news and current events information on their cell.

• 49% have downloaded an application that allows them to access news, weather, sports, or other information on their cell.

• 44% check sports scores and related information on their cell.

• 35% check traffic information on their cell.

• 32% get financial information or updates.

• 31% get news alerts sent by text or email to their phones.

• 88% say yes to at least one of the above.

When it comes to privacy whom does the public trust?  Last year, they trusted Facebook and eLoans. according to the Ponemon Institute's annual Most Trusted Companies for Privacy Study. It is the fifth consecutive year that American Express earned the Most Trusted for Privacy distinction. IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett Packard, and E-Bay rounded out the five top-rated companies. In the communications field Verizon Wireless bested the new comer to the list AT&T.

Verizon was also the highest-ranked communications company on the 2008 list of Most Trusted Companies for Privacy.

Highlights from the survey and the January 2010 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report include:

• iPod touch users spent an average of 100 minutes per day using applications. webOS users spent an average of 87 minutes per day, followed by Android users at 80 minutes and iPhone users at 79 minutes per day.
• 73 percent of Android users are male, compared to only 56 percent of iPhone OS users. The average iPhone user is 14 years older than the average iPod touch user of which 78 percent are below the age of 24.
• iPhone represented 47 percent of US smartphone usage in AdMob's network in January 2010, followed by Android, RIM and webOS devices at 39, seven, and three percent, respectively.
• 91 percent of iPhone users and 88 percent of iPod touch users would recommend their device, compared to 84 percent of Android users and 69 percent of webOS users.
• iPod touch owners download an average of 12 applications a month, 37 percent more than iPhone and Android users who download approximately nine new apps. webOS users downloaded an average of six applications per month.